CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Browns quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains said in a radio interview Thursday that a text from Johnny Manziel during the draft helped inspire owner Jimmy Haslam to trade up for him.

"We're sitting there and they keep showing Johnny on T.V. and Johnny and I are texting and he shoots me a text and he says, 'I wish you guys would come get me. Hurry up and draft me because I want to be there. I want to wreck this league together.'

"When I got that text, I forwarded it to the owner and to the head coach (Mike Pettine),'' Loggains said Thursday on Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly on Arkansas ESPN. "I'm like 'this guy wants to be here. He wants to be part of it.' As soon as that happened, Mr. Haslam said, 'pull the trigger. We're trading up to go get this guy.'''

The Browns traded up from No. 26 to No. 22 and turned Johnny Football into Johnny Cleveland.

"It shows you what type of competitor the kid is and I got to spend so much time with him leading up to this process,'' said Loggains, a former Arkansas Razorback. "I feel like I know him very well. I had a good relationship with him. That's the type of kid this guy is. He wants to do well. He's got a chip on his shoulder and he decided to be a Brown.''

Loggains revealed that the coaching staff was involved throughout the draft, and that he was pulled into the war room whenever they came close to drafting a quarterback.

"It's not a cone of secrecy whatsoever,'' he said. "We were very involved, which is always good for a coaching staff when you get to choose your own quarterback.''

A source said Loggains never meant to make it sound like Haslam made the pick instead of general manager Ray Farmer. "Farmer definitely made the call,'' the source said. Instead, he wanted to convey how excited everyone in the organization was -- all the way to the top -- that Manziel was so eager to come here.

Haslam corroborated that during a speech on Monday.

"Ray's the one that picked Johnny Manziel," Haslam told the Pro Football Hall of Fame luncheon club on Monday. "We took the top-rated quarterback on our board when he was available. That was solely Ray's call, not my call."

He added that although "Ray gets a lot of input, Ray's the one that decided to make the trade, Ray's the one that picked Johnny Manziel, Ray's the one that made those calls and that's his job. I want to make that very clear.''

Loggains also revealed the Browns tried to trade up to No. 11 with the Titans and No. 16 with the Cowboys.

"Mr. Haslam and coach Pettine had called me down to the draft room a couple of times throughout the night and we had almost made trades with Tennessee and Dallas and backed out,'' he said. "...We were sitting there and coach Pettine keeps texting me, and we're going back and forth and we're going 'hey does Dallas take him here, no they won't. Does St. Louis take him at 13?' We knew we had to get in front of the Chiefs (at No. 23) because we knew they would draft him.''

Finally, when the Browns got down to No. 22, they pulled off the trade with Philadelphia to select the former Heisman Trophy winner, sending a third-round pick to the Eagles.

"Coach texted me and said, 'we're making the trade, we're moving up' so at that point I knew I was summoned to the draft room to get on the phone and tell him he was going to be a Cleveland Brown,'' said Loggains.

Loggains knew as early as February that Haslam was enamored with the former Texas A&M product.

"When I decided to take this job in Cleveland, I knew that our owner liked Johnny a lot,'' said Loggains. "I think I worked out 14 quarterbacks, went to their schools, their high schools and worked them out, ate dinner with them, brought them to Cleveland. Once we finished all of our evaluations, it was Johnny's name at the top of the list and there was everyone else, so I knew we needed a quarterback and we were very high on Johnny.''

As the draft grew closer, Loggains had an even stronger feeling Johnny Football would be sitting across from him every day in his meeting room.

"I knew definitely that Johnny was someone that was very high on our board and someone that was in our discussions the weeks leading up to the draft,'' said Loggains. "I knew there was a good chance if he was there at some point we were going to take him or even move up to go get him.''

Follow Us

cleveland.com is powered by Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and Northeast Ohio Media Group. All rights reserved (About Us).The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Northeast Ohio Media Group LLC.